IBRA draws up 10 financial groups as servicing agent

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) has shortlisted 10 groups of financial institutions as the servicing agent to help in restructuring Rp 5.42 trillion (US$634.66 million) in bank nonperforming loans (NPLs).

Agency deputy chairman Irwan Siregar said the 10 groups included Bank Central Asia, Bank BNI and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Cerberus, Bank NISP, PDFCI Securities and First City, Deutsche Bank and Bank Mandiri, GE Capital and Goldman Sachs, Bank Lippo, Bank Niaga, Bank Panin and ANZ, Sakura Merchant Bank, and Bank Universal, Niaga Securities and Amir Abadi Jusuf.

Irwan said in a statement that consulting firm Arthur Andersen would assist the agency in selecting the servicing agent.

He said it was part of the agency's second round of its outsourcing program.

"The selection process of a servicing agent for tranche two of the outsourcing program will be conducted through an open tender process." He said equal and fair opportunities would be provided to the nominees to conduct due diligence on the commercial loan data held by the agency.

IBRA has been determined to source out the restructuring of NPLs of between Rp 5 billion and 50 billion.

It received more than Rp 200 trillion worth of NPLs from domestic banks as part of the country's bank restructuring program.

The agency is mandated to recover the loans in a bid to help finance the costly bank restructuring program.

Irwan said the Rp 5.42 trillion NPLs comprised 1,209 accounts of some 491 obligors or 505 debtors. An obligor is a group of debtors owned by a single business party or business group.

He said the second round of the outsourcing program was expected to amount to about Rp 8 trillion because the commercial loan portfolio in IBRA was currently in process.

"The outsourcing program is conducted because it involves a large number of debtors but in terms of value it is not very significant," Irwan said.

"The outsourcing program represents an effort by IBRA to accelerate the recovery of commercial loans."

He added the program would be carried out in three stages for the fiscal year 2000/2001.(rei)